Hundreds of thousands of people suffer from hay fever and other allergies caused by dust pollen and smog in the air. Conventional filters with pore size small enough to remove the irritant particles plug readily and require heavy noisy blowers to drive the air through the filters. Such filters do not remove chemical vapors which make up much of the common "smogs."
Gas scrubbers provide an excellent method of gas purification and gas conditioning. They have been in use in various applications for nearly a hundred years. Although scrubbing can be achieved by bubbling the gas through a liquid, much greater gas cleaning efficiency is achieved by dispersing the liquid as a spray in the gas and then separating the liquid droplets from the gas. The spray is generally created by some jetting or centrifugal precipitator. These usually involve a large noisy piece of equipment and consequently there has been no application of the method to home air purification or conditioning.
Recent developments in the ecology field have made it clear how significant air pollutants are in impairing health. There is a desparate need for simple, economical and practical air purification systems for home use.